fake pundits with real PACs

Stephen Colbert Gets His Political ‘Super PAC,’ For America

Famous pretend cable blowhard Stephen Colbert has been trying to get a “Super Political Action Committee” approved by Clarence Thomas, and now there’s a Colbert PAC, so that the multi-millionaire entertainer can legally raise unlimited amounts of money for whatever he wants. This is funny, we guess?

“In the course of dramatizing the campaign finance law’s problems in the way that Mr. Colbert dramatizes all problems, he almost opened up serious disclosure loopholes in campaign finance law,” Wertheimer said.

The FEC ruling, he said, “simply confirms what people would have thought the law was when it comes to the media exemption and what TV personalities can do on their own shows.”

Oh yes it's funny, because Colbert is going to do what it is not in the self-interest of the MSM to do: mockingly expose the way the Citizens United decision will make a mockery of representative government.

Maybe. I hope. Please…

ArmoredBore

Even if he didn't, would we be any worse off than before?

MildMidwesterner

America's representative government does not need any help from Mr. Colbert to make a mockery of itself, thank you very much!

We all need better ways to earn money. I'm listening to the BBC online and an American called in to scream about the British teachers protesting about their pensions being slashed. Says the American: "America is broke, Great Britain is broke, Greece is broke, all of Europe is broke!"

The main way for a country not to be broke is to raise revenue by taxes. And with a Pentagon budget twice what it was when Dubya took over (now about 700 billion yearly) it might be time to stay home and not try to remake the world into a Jesus-loving, plutocracy.

GOPCrusher

Yeah. Love that "It's not that people are taxed too much. It's that we spend too much." philosophy.
OK. Lets bring the troops home and cut funding for the F-22 and other new weapons systems development for a threat that does not exist.

SayItWithWookies

Democracy 21 and Campaign Legal Center argued Colbert's super PAC could lead to a "radical evisceration" of campaign finance rules and the blurring of lines between politics and media.

Oh good, I'm glad someone's on top of this whole blurring the line between politics and the media. After they tackle this issue, maybe they can look into who sunk the Maine in Havana harbor.

Steverino247

It was probably some idiot sailor stealing a smoke too close to the coal bunker. However, Spain was nearby and looked pretty guilty.

arihaya

… However, Spain was nearby and looked pretty guilty.

and brown

Steverino247

That's implied in the "looked pretty guilty," dude.

mumbly_joe

So, I'm actually really impressed with this move. He's definitely doing a great job of straddling the line between comedy and social commentary- this is every bit as big a joke as his show, but he's definitely been determined to push it as far as it can go, in order to demonstrate precisely just how fucked up our post-Citizens United campaign finance system actually is.

Which is why it's been great that FEC has handled this just like any other serious application, and also that Colberts own lawyers have been telling the FEC, "No, seriously, don't do this, if you allow this it means that campaign finance is literally ruined forever". Because it does, or rather, means that campaign finance has already been ruined forever, for a while now.

Says a lot about our country, when we have to rely on people like Bill Maher, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert to show everyone how fucked up things have gotten. We used to have real journalists in this country.

mumbly_joe

Except, as much as I like Jon, and (occasionally) Maher, Colbert is the only one to actually follow through with a stunt like this. Jon has his media hobby horse, and he's willing to call out "newsertainment" hosts for being terrible on their own shows, but compare this, or what he pulled the White House Correspondents' Dinner to the Rally to Make Some Muddled Point About Not Being Mean to Each Other.

Um, no. There are no communists in the Democratic party, or anywhere in the US outside of a few college students today. Communism is a very specific political ideology, and you only make yourself look like even more of a moron when you use that term to describe people who are quite clearly not communists.

ttommyunger

But Communist SOUNDS so scary, Soros. Let the kids have their fun.

GOPCrusher

But Michele Bachmann wants the U.S. to be like an economic superpower, and the only real economic superpower left is Communist China.

Unix Gurus, long bearded men who look like wizards and smell like freshman, those gatekeepers of the precious servers that the banking/defense industry runs on.

Negropolis

The mimes?

PocketsTheClown

The Boobs. Or booze, which clowns love.

CapeClod

You supply the pictures, I'll supply the war.

KeepFnThatChicken

I really don't see much happening with this. Other than the possibility that some people donate… it'd be like paying to watch him on TV.

Callyson

Ah, but what will Colbert's bribes, I mean campaign contributions, go towards? Will he go for the laughs and send the bucks to the Tea Party? Or will he give himself a comedic challenge by helping those who are actually competent?

tihond

If I were Colbert (and I think this would fit with his schtick), I'd run ads that "support" Republican candidates but are so over the top that the candidates themselves have to denounce them.

GOPCrusher

That whole thing got pretty awkward, once the Republiklans related to the fact that he really wasn't one of them, but was in fact, ridiculing them.

tihond

Or Harvey Birdman?

Lionel[redacted]Esq

Exit 57?

MinAgain

I love Stephen, but there's a point at which satire becomes a very scary reality, and everyone stops laughing.

My lil sister think the Glenn Beck firing was a conspiracy and she loves Steven Colbert, I think he has at least one left.

Negropolis

Snark off, but this thing could go down in flames, or it may seriously become something big enough to affect the election. I really hope it's the latter. I don't see how anyone but the right doesn't get this and appreciate his follow-through on this. Not everything has to be fart-jokes humor.

carlgt1

hell they couldn't handle the Obama impersonator when he started up with a tame Bachmann joke….

Ken Cuccinelli

Man, I remember hearing this on NPR and imagining the commercials he'd be running for Romney/Bachmann 2012 and the various U.S. House and Senate dingbats that will no doubt pop up in the next sixteen months. Every time he does this it'll make the cable TeeVee news. And he'll be virtually immune to the Breitbarts of the world finding out who paid for the commercials and distracting from his shtick. It really is genius, and if anyone would take it "that far", it'd be Colbert.

The decision here basically lets Viacom pay for these parody ads, which I am 100% sure they will do because it will be good for his ratings. I kinda doubt he's gonna be looking for serious scratch from his viewers.

What I don't get is the low percentage of people in this thread who "don't get it" or think he's sold out. I mean, really? The only people who'd stick with him if his show was something less than a stonefaced satire of Konservative Kable Kommentators are the people who already think he's not a parody.